


The Driver

by SkyyeStrike



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Coercion, Flirting, Heroes to Vigilantes, M/M, Mutual Attraction, PWP, Reading Between The Lines, Sexual Coercion, Sexual Content, blatant use of sarcasm, but not really because there is actually some plot, mafia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:54:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26958406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkyyeStrike/pseuds/SkyyeStrike
Summary: Being a personal driver is, well… it’s beneath Jack.Being Gabriel Reyes' personal driver? Well, Jack may have bitten off a little bit more than he could chew
Relationships: Reaper | Gabriel Reyes/Soldier: 76 | Jack Morrison
Comments: 9
Kudos: 71





	The Driver

**Author's Note:**

> I have nothing to say for myself except, uh, Happy Halloween??  
> (*cough* this fit has nothing to do with halloween *cough cough*)

Being a personal driver is, well… it’s beneath Jack. 

He sighs, leans against the side of the pristine, freshly waxed BMW he’d been assigned to drive, nondescript and black with deeply tinted windows. He smokes his cigarette in silence and watches the cars go by, biding his time, and mourning the terms his life has come to.

Twelve years in the service. Twelve years serving his country, taking lives, doing the dirty work, and here he was. A driver for hire, because no place else would hire a vet like him, looking like a grizzled, dangerous ex-convict with an obliteratingly terrifying record under the quiet, black seal of ‘confidential.’

Sure, people were nice enough to him about it, and the jobs who didn’t hire him always had a plausible, sympathetically styled excuse: “He was overqualified for this job”, or “he would feel restless doing this kind of work.” Once, a stern, steel-gazed restaurant manager had once told him point blank that he would scare away all her customers, and Jack really couldn’t fault that. It was probably true. 

Somehow he didn’t fit with civilian life anymore, and it was more than just the scars etched across the bridge of his nose and through the bow of his mouth. When he’d been fighting, the fear he commanded had delivered him respect. A respect he’d returned tenfold with his capability in the field, his prowess as a commander. The scars, the stern set of his jaw and his hard eyes had been an asset that proclaimed what he was without words. 

Now, back on the home soil he’d fought so long to protect, it had become something almost like shackles. Here, he didn’t have a public reputation to stir fear in recruits, but somehow, even smiling polite and disarmed, people saw him and immediately shied away from him. Like they sensed the predator that lay beneath.

It was tiring to deal with. Easy to succumb to depression under. It made Jack realize what all those retired veteran meetings were for, even though he’d never managed to step foot through the doors to one. There, they would all know what he’d been, and somehow, that was exponentially worse. That chapter in his life was over, and he desperately longed to leave it behind. Actively attending a meeting- it felt like ripping the scab off a wound that just wanted to close. 

It left Jack at a hard sort of crossroads that left him wishing desperately that he had done something else with his life. Chosen to be someone else. 

It wasn’t so bad though, he tries consoling himself, cigarette starting to burn down to a nub between his fingers. In the distance, a car horn blares to the echo of more, and Jack watches the streetlight change from red to green. It could be better, but wasn’t so bad. This gig he’d been working lately paid much better than any of the previous side-jobs he’d tried scrounging for. And it was a hell of a lot more dignified than body-guarding for clubs of rowdy drunk kids. 

A door slams, and whistling accompanies it. Gabriel’s back, practically sauntering as he slides his coat back into place, smoothes the lapels like they’d been ruffled. The jacket alone is probably just as expensive as the car Jack’s leaning against, and it makes Gabriel look good, the broad cut of his shoulders severe, crisp white of his business attire dress-shirt stark contrast to the midnight colored attire that helped him masquerade as an affluent CEO. Jack was starting to know better, now.

At his heels trots Mcree, who readjusts his trademark cowboy hat to sit low over his eyes. Jack likes Jesse- young, but smart. Natural street-skills, which was something that couldn’t just be wholly learned. When he sees Jack, he gives a boyishly charming smile that completely contrasts his scruffily thick beard. 

“We’re back from the dead!” He greets, chipper as a kite, sidling up to the passenger side of the car. Jack snorts at him, and flicks the last of his cigarette into the parking lot, pushing away from the car to get the door for his most current boss. 

Gabriel’s smile is a lot more effortlessly blithe, gleaming white with a “Thanks, Jackie,” before he slides into the car. 

Jack hates the nickname. For what he’s being paid though, Gabriel could call him pretty much whatever he wanted. 

Jesse turns the radio to some neo-funk hoedown noise, which Jack promptly turns the volume lower on and hides his smirk at Jesse’s subsequent pout, unfitting for a thirty year old man. He starts the car with a quick glance at Gabriel in the back seat, settling against the letter, and grimaces. Before the car moves, he pulls out a kerchief from an inside pocket and passes it back through the dividing window.

Gabriel takes it with a question and Jack just motions vaguely to his own cheek. “You have some…”

With a sudden nod of understanding, Gabriel swipes the cloth over his cheek and jaw, sopping up the remnant spatter of blood that had barely been noticeable against his dark skin. 

Instead of saying ‘thanks’ when he passes back Jack’s kerchief, now nicely stained, he says “You just carry one of those things around with you?”

“Never know when you’ll need it.” Jack liked to be prepared. His eyes flicker away from Gabriel’s in the rearview window. He ignores Gabriel’s amused puff of ‘old man,’ as he pulls them out into traffic.

As always, Jesse requests to be dropped off around the corner from his favorite Pachinko parlour about five minutes into the ride. His eyes are far away and dreamy, uncaring when Gabriel gives him a chiding, “Be careful chico. You’re playing with fire.”

Jesse’s only answer is a blithely cheeky grin that scrunches his whole face into a mischievous caricature; “I like fires.” Then Jack has to tell him to get his dirty cowboy boots off the dashboard once again.

Jesse waves them off from the streetside with an overly dramatic flourish of his corny cowboy hat and a mock bow. His hair glints nearly red gold in the sunlight until it’s shaded once again by the wide brim of his hat, his cocky swagger into the second largest yakuza headquarters parts the crowd with no regrets. 

“He’s gonna get himself killed one of these days.” Gabriel grouses fondly from the backseat, and Jack nods sagely. He’d known more than a few guys with Jesse’s brazen, devil-may-care attitude when he had been in the forces, and Gabriel was only correct.

“Most definitely, sir. Love makes people stupid.” Because that was what it was- Jesse, stupidly, blindly in love with one of the most dangerous men this side of the hemisphere. Hanzo Shimada’s name crests the reports of watchlists for every developed country, and had made itself known in every single department Jack had ever been skivvied into. 

He can feel Gabriel looking at him. It was impossible not to; the other man’s gaze was something tangible and heavy on the back of his neck. Jack keeps his eyes fastidiously forward, focuses on merging into traffic and avoiding a hovervan that apparently doesn’t know how to look behind themselves. It feels like there’s a question in the air between them, but if Gabriel wanted to say something more about Jesse, or Jack’s comment, he would in his own due time and it was not Jack’s place to prod. With a free hand, Jack changes the radio off of Jesse’s awful choice in music and to something mellower.

“Know a lot about love, do you, corn-boy?” Gabriel finally says, long minutes of silent driving later. Jack just smiles indulgently through the rearview mirror, and offers bland nothing. 

This part of the job he’s good at. Responding when needed. Keeping quiet elsewise. Driving them place to place with no questions asked and always showing up where requested, when requested. In a way, it's no different than the military- coolly professional, effortlessly dispassionate, and always following someone else’s orders- no matter how much Gabriel’s syrupy smiles and sloe-eyed looks through the mirrors encourage him to do otherwise. He keeps jobs only with the same strict boundaries he’d afforded himself for years in the past, and this one is no different. Jack has learned over the years that keeping his mouth shut, more often than not, ended up yielding the most favorable results.

It’s just a job. A job he carefully sashays around knowing too much about, and around knowing the specific happenings that Gabriel qualified as ‘work.’ 

Besides. Jack was trying to keep his nose clean these days. He knows that more than one past superior officer who would outright laugh at this being Jack’s idea of staying out of trouble, but it was really the principal of it… wasn’t it?

When Jack pulls up to Gabriel’s estate and lets Gabriel out, Gabriel has him light his cigarette. Dusk is falling, and the colors paint themselves on Gabriel’s skin- cold blue and dark, burnt orange. And, like a dramatic comic-book rendition, Gabriel seems like something that has strode right out from the hued pages, an action character brought to lull in this moment with Jack, standing at the bottom of the stairs to a house more expensive than Jack’s entire livelihood put together. 

Gabriel tells him to be careful. And be back by 8:00am sharp. Jack gives him a salute that he knows Gabriel will take as the joke it is, and waits until Gabriel is inside of the massive double front doors before driving away. 

______________________

This new job pays well, but Jack has been at it for less than six months, and while he tries to catch up with all his backlogged bills, he lives in a tiny, one bedroom apartment on the same short change allowance the government had allotted him after his honorable discharge. 

It’s kind of easy to lament that this is what his life has turned into- a strange, ill-fitting monotony. A suit he thought he’d wear comfortably when the time came, but now the time is here and it sits too snug in all the wrong places. He soothes the agitation how he can- a run every single morning, ten miles at least. Consistent work for consistent cigarettes. Probably too much liquor. 

And each night ending like this- coming home from ferrying Gabriel anywhere and everywhere he wanted, all over the city, to a completely empty house. To dying potted plants and standing out with them on his porch, like some sort of sentinel scarecrow. 

At least the city was pretty. Jack’s been a lot of places now, and the list that includes home soil locations is becoming cumbersome with each new city he tries to rehome himself in. But LA itself has a unique, special sort of beauty around this time of the evening that’s faintly reminiscent of the time Jack had spent in Dubai. Most of the burning daylight heat has fizzled away by now, and the climbing nightlife spurred the city into beams of color and spotlights from nightclubs and rooftop parties. The illuminated mansions, the towering skyscrapers picketing rivers of lit streets and traffic was all backdropped by the deep, blue green sea- a portrait off a picturesque postcard. 

As pretty a scene as you could get, Jack thinks to himself and admires it from his back porch with a beer. This was one of the only things Jack had splurged to make sure his apartment on the sunny California coastline had- a view. He wonders what the view is like from Gabriel’s house. Probably twice as stunning, situated on the cliffside and set away from the megapolis that sprawled below.

That makes him wonder what Gabriel was getting into tonight. Wondering about Gabe’s afterhours fell into the little space that Jack filed as ‘better off not knowing,’ because he was seriously supposed to be keeping his nose clean. Trying to be an upstanding citizen, and he was already toeing the line carefully. 

The thought is still there. Jack’s ferrying him around the city was only a small part of Gabriel’s work, and Jack was just starting to be in LA long enough, working for Gabriel long enough to begin putting pieces of the puzzle together. 

He swallows the meddlesome thoughts with another, heftier swig of beer, and decides a cigarette is worth it. 

Knock knock knock. Three sharp raps at the door has Jack turning towards it, lighter only halfway towards lighting the cigarette hanging from his lips, and his eyes flicker to the wall clock. Nearly 10:30pm, and Jack didn’t get visitors. 

Jack takes his pistol from behind a planter and steps lightly to the door. Years of paranoid instinct and training leans him against the wall just beside the door instead of in front of it to call, “Who is it?”

“Detective Song, Jack. Open up.”

Jack takes a deeply steadying breath. Hana. He slides the safety back onto the pistol and it finds it’s familiar place at the small of his back before he swings the door open, sans the chain. He hopes the smile he pastes on reaches his eyes, but the look on Hana’s face says that it very much doesn’t. 

“Good evening, Officer Song. Little late to be out and about making inquiries, isn’t it?” 

“‘Detective’ now, Jack. Detective. I just said it.” She says, still in her blue uniform. She’d been one of the first people Jack had met when moving to LA, and back then she’d been green and fresh from the academy. Tonight, she’s looking tired- they’re running her too hard. Too bright and enthusiastic about the work to escape that kind of treatment from her peers and superiors, and Jack thinks that's a pity for such a capable young woman. 

She leans on one hip as she regards him. “Can I come in?”

Instead, Jack steps out into the hall barefoot, and brings his beer with him. He closes the door and leans against it which earns him a beleaguered sigh. 

“Just tryin’ to be friendly,” She gripes, taking the place across from him against the opposing wall, the width of the hallway apart. Jack takes the cigarette he’s tucked behind his ear and lights it under her watch. “How’ve you been, Jack? Settling in now?”

Jack shrugs, puffs the cigarette to life. “More or less. How’s the station? Have any more ugly run-ins with the law?”

“Well, that is kinda the name of the game,” She chuckles. “Haven’t seen you hanging around the bars lately.” Her eyes are on his beer, and they flicker up to his face when he takes a sip. “That an improvement, or should I be worried?”

“I’m staying out of trouble. No need to worry over here.” The bars usually led to bar fights, and well. Jack needed to not be in a jail cell in order to keep his job, didn’t he? His record was messy enough as it was.

“I hope so. Me and Reinhardt went by that falafel place you like. I brought you some.” And she holds out a paper bag starting to get soggy with grease that Jack hadn’t noticed before.

Skeptical, Jack takes it with a murmured thanks. If she was bringing him food to sweeten him up, then this trip was about nothing good. He sets the bag by the doorframe next to his feet, folds his arms over his chest and smokes. “How’s Wilhelm doing?”

“Good, good!” Hana says buoyantly. “He and Ana are gonna tie the knot soon- I think I’m gonna have to cover his shift, but you should come by the wedding!”

“I didn’t get an invite.”

“Oh.” That makes her stop, and then she continues on, undeterred. “Well you know how they are. They’d be more than happy to have you Jack, you know that!”

Jack didn’t. He and Reinhardt were passable friends- his fiance Ana had been Jack’s parole officer for a small span of time, ensuring he’d gone to AA meetings that hadn’t stuck. “Well, if they send an invite, I’ll find the time.” And a good excuse to not arrive.

“Really? Awesome, I’ll pass the message along.” Hana smiles at him so brightly, that her age shows through every inch of her young frame. She was truely too good to be dealing with a messy city like this. 

Police chatter sounds loud from Hana’s shoulder radio, and with a quick flick, she switches it off, but no conversation fills the gap. Jack waits, because sooner or later, Hana wouldn’t be able to beat around the bush anymore and would have to tell him the real reason she’s stopped by his cruddy apartment, late at night and bearing bribes. 

“So.” A pause that’s more lengthy than it should be. Hana’s eyes skitter around his face until they land firmly on his eyes. “How’s work been lately?”

Ah, here it is, Jack thinks and burns his cigarette down to the stub. “Been fine. Lots of odd jobs.” He bends down to put the burnt end into a bottle because Hana’s watching him do it and he doesn’t want to end up fined for littering. Not because he’s intentionally trying to be evasive. 

Hana hums and watches him. “Word around is that you're Gabriel Reyes’ new personal chauffeur. How is that?”

“Not bad for a side job. Pays pretty well.”

“Oh, I bet it does. Is that what you were doing today?”

It’s what he’d been doing everyday, so he shrugs, and drinks his becoming lukewarm beer. Get to the point. 

“You must see a lotta stuff, driving around a powerful man like that.” She says, and she’s not experienced enough to keep the searching tone out of her voice. “Anything out of the ordinary?”

Jack eyes her. “This sounds an awful lot like an interrogation, Officer Song. Am I being recorded?” He jokes.

“Detective.” She makes a face. “I’m not trying to interrogate you. It’s just… he’s a powerful man for a reason, Jack. If you’re getting yourself into trouble…”

“I can keep myself out of trouble. I’m a big boy, Hana. ” Jack gives a wry smile. “You sure you’re not asking because of that investigation that’s all over the papers?”

The papers that had filled with speculations on whether or not the great and powerful Gabriel Reyes, enigmatic CEO, had any connections to the infamous vigilante Reaper, who had been wreaking havoc on the city for months now. Reaper’s targets had been corporations and conglomerates, toppled into submission, and yet Reyes’ company itself had miraculously managed to remain scathe free so far. A coincidence enough that a reporter had picked up on it, added in some juicy embellished details to up newspaper sales, and the rumor had taken off like wildfire. But that was all it was right now- a rumor. 

Hana’s face goes blank in a way that says that Jack has hit the nail on the head, though. Bright girl. 

“I can’t confirm or deny anything, but when the allegations are so widespread, we have to at least look into the problem-”

“You’re barking up the wrong tree.” He tells her plainly, and it’s like he’s slapped her. 

“You know I’m not Jack. The investigation is ongoing, but you’re close to him. You see his everyday activities. If you’ve seen anything that-”

“Is this why you had to come by my place after hours, Miss Junior Rookie of the Year? Because your ‘investigation’ is ongoing?”

Maybe that was a low blow, but Hana was right. Gabriel was dangerous. She should keep her nose far from it, and out of Jack’s orbit while he circled Gabriel. 

The friendliness has all but faded from Hana now, and she draws herself up. “Gabriel Reyes has known allies amongst the local gangs. He was sued twice for coercion and threats to assault in just the past year, Jack.”

Jack tries taking another drink and is disappointed to find that the bottle is empty. His eyes don’t leave Hana’s. 

Aware that she’s met a wall, Hana sighs and begins fishing around in one of her regulation vest pockets until she finds what she’s looking for.

“He is a bad man, Jack. A very, awful, unstable and bad man. Help me put him away.” She extends her card to him, and it glints in the hallway light. There are five more sitting on the mantle back in his living room. 

Looking at the card pointedly, he meets her eyes, hard on his own. Determined and good at her job. Maybe one day, she would catch Gabriel, but Jack wasn’t going to be the stepping stool to help her. He shakes his head sharply. “You don’t know Gabriel, Hana. I respect that you think you’re doing your job, but like I said; you are barking up the wrong tree.”

With a grimace that ends in an annoyed hiss, Hana retracts the card and snaps it back shut into it’s designated pocket. “I don’t understand you Jack. All those years in the military- why do you hate the police so much?” Why won’t you help me?

Jack thinks on that. He likes Hana, but she wouldn’t understand. It wasn’t something you explained, per se, but learned through experiences that Jack wouldn’t wish on anyone, and wasn’t particularly keen to share in the hallway with an officer of the law. 

He taps the glass rim against his lip. “When I was your age, kid, I was supposed to take over my family’s farm. Instead, I ran away and joined the military. Changed my perspectives, and showed me that things aren’t always quite as clear cut as they seem at first glance. Almost never are, actually.” 

He tosses his empty beer bottle into the overflowing recycling bin outside the door that matches the one sitting next to his refrigerator in the kitchen. Then he folds his arms over his chest and wishes he’d brought his cigarette pack out here with him, not the gun. 

Hana’s frown is troubled, her gaze is far too concerned and makes Jack’s skin prickle. “Jack, I-”

“Don’t think too hard about it, Hana.” Jack says, and gestures at his own face. “But don’t make the same mistakes I did, either.”

Her eyes follow his hand, and he can see the way she tracks the scars on his face. She’d made a good impression with him, the first time they’d met when she had carefully refused to give any extra attention to the parallel lines that sliced through the centermost part of his face, narrowly missing his eye, carving his lips in two right down the middle. Most people couldn’t take their eyes off them, and he could practically tell when they were conjuring their own stories about how Jack got them. 

Those memories are buried deep enough that not even Jack dares to dig them up. 

Now, he lets Detective Hana Song take her fill, still shiny and unbroken by a harshly cruel world, and shows her just what happened when you toed the line too hard. Lets her take a long look at what happened when you asked too many questions and they started to get you in trouble. Good deeds were so often entangled with bad choices that the difference was impossible to see when you looked close enough. These were mistakes Jack had earned, and he had learned hard truths from. 

“Right,” She says, and sounds small and confused. 

Jack has a feeling another smile won’t put her at ease, so instead he just tips his head to her, reaching for the bag of food she’d been kind enough to bring by. He wiggles it at her. “Goodnight, Officer Song. Thanks for dinner.”

“Goodnight, Jack.” 

Hana is almost to the stairwell when she turns back towards him. “Jack? Just… be careful around him. You don’t know what he’s capable of.”

Jack stifles his laugh with a twisted smirk. He didn’t need to know, he had a very good idea. And by little miss Hana Song’s standards, his history would probably stain much blacker than Gabriel’s. 

“I’ll be fine. Good luck on your case.”

She waves the last off, knowing he doesn’t mean it. Jack watches her disappear down the stairwell and listens to the receding of her boots long after they’ve faded. 

He needs a cigarette. 

The sun has finished setting fully in the time that he’s been talking to Hana in the hallway, and the apartment has since been plunged into darkness. Jack doesn’t bother hitting the lights as he roots for the pack of cigarettes he’d left on the living room table, planning on bringing it to the porch with him. 

The flick of the flame lights up dimly amber, making shadows flutter on the walls, and Jack stops, once again just a breath from lighting the cigarette perched between his lips. The gun is still safely at the small of his back, so he continues and puffs the cigarette to life before he says into the darkness. “Don’t be a creep. I know it’s you.”

Like something made from darkness itself, Gabriel melts from the shadows. “That’s a freaky ability you have.”

“Could say the same about you.” Jack just shrugs. No one had snuck up on him in years except for Gabriel, and the first time it had happened, Jack had nearly landed an uppercut to his prospective employer’s jugular before he could stop himself. 

The surprise has long since faded off though. He’s getting used to these on again off again intrusions that Gabriel likes to make, unannounced. Jack smokes and moves around him to the fridge to fish out a fresh beer. Gets one for Gabe too, and pops both caps off. “Guess my place is popular tonight.”

Gabriel takes the beer and plops himself ungracefully onto Jack’s tiny beater couch like it’s a throne. Even though the couches Gabe has in his plaza of a home are probably much more plush and comfortable than Jack’s, he seems right at home, propping up his heavy boots on the edge of the coffee table. His eyes alight on Jack’s cigarette. 

“Bum me one.”

Jack is trying not to think about how casual the image of Gabriel, larger than life, dangerous and probably armed to the teeth right now, perfectly at ease on the couch in Jack’s living room is starting to become. He pulls out a cigarette, lights it, and passes it over. 

Gabriel makes a face. “This is cheap as shit, Jack. How can you smoke these?”

Another shrug. Jack’s default these days. “Not all of us are made of money.”

And then there’s silence. The lights are still off, and Jack sits on a chair opposite Gabriel while they smoke in the darkness. He lets his own cigarette finish before he breaks the quiet. 

“Why’re you here?”

“Can’t visit a friend without needing some sort of motive?” Is what Gabriel returns with. There’s a bone white mask settled at his hip, the unearthly glint of a barn owl’s visage seeming infinitely more haunting when it’s the only bright thing in the apartment. 

“Is that what we are?” Jack meets a question with a question, because he honestly doesn’t know. He works for Gabe, but being friends….

Well. Jack can pretty much count the number of legitimate friends he has on one hand. 

Gabriel’s dark enough that Jack can’t see whatever expression he’s wearing, but his eyes pick up the reflection of moonlight from outside the window, smoke wreathing around him like something ethereal and live. “I heard what you said in the hallway.”

“I’m not surprised.” Gabriel had probably listened to the whole conversation, waiting for Jack to come back inside. The thought isn’t as disturbing as it should be. 

“Didn’t know you were friends with Detective Song.”

“I’m not,” Jack says, maybe a little too quickly, because a thread of tension winds itself in the air between them. “She was the first officer on site when I came to town.”

“Car crash?”

Jack rubs the back of his neck. “Bar fight.”

“Well, that figures.” Gabe snorts. “So she pays you special checkup visits? Must have been some bar fight.”

It had been. Four on one, and by the time the cops had shown up, three of them had been mashed into unconsciousness on the pavement, and Jack had been on his way doing the same to the fourth. 

It had been. Four on one, and by the time the cops had shown up, three of them had been mashed into unconsciousness on the pavement, and Jack had been on his way doing the same to the fourth. 

They both knew that wasn’t why Hana had shown up here tonight. Jack is contemplating another cigarette, but his throat hurts almost as much as his wallet does. “You didn’t answer my question. Aren’t you a little far from your side of town?” 

Gabe shrugs. “Business in the area. Thought I’d drop by.”

“.... That’s not the reason.” Jack deadpans.

Gabriel goes silent, and seems to think something over. He puts his practically untouched beer on the coffee table between them. “I heard something a while back. Little birdie mentioned you know how to handle a gun.”

“My service years are in your file-”

“Not your service years.”

Jack snaps his mouth shut with a frown. “A little birdie?”

“Friend of mine. Specializes in finding the information that no one else sees.” 

Well. That could mean anything. But Jack feels like he already knows what Gabriel is edging at. His stomach feels like a hard knot, twisted up inside of him. “What do you know?”

Gabriel examines his gloves- metal tipped talons that were as much for intimidation as they were for drawing blood. The silver tips shine when he twists his hand. “Spent a long time over in Italy, didn’t you?”

Italy. In the four years he’d spent there, only the single year of being in the marines was supposed to be on file. His frown deepens. “... I was in the marines,” He says a little hesitantly, trying to sidestep wherever this conversation is being steered. 

It doesn’t work. “The experimental program you were in. Obviously a success- I saw the before and after pictures, and then you were shipped off to what, twelve different countries in just a few years? Some nice work.”

This was dangerous territory. Whoever Gabe’s little birdie was, they were thorough. 

“I wouldn’t call it that.” Jack had hated every moment he’d spent doing other people’s dirty work. Had hated it with a passion in every moment except for the moments that he didn’t, and the bloodlust and war rage had been all consuming. He painted the world in red with a deft skill that had built him into an asset for his country and a curse for his enemies. ‘Nice work,’ made it seem like an accomplishment.

“Whatever you want to call it, Jackie-boy, the battle lives in you. That experimental program had a less than 5% survival rate, and you beat those odds.” Gabriel hums. “Wouldn’t you say that’s a success?”

“What they did to me should never have been done to a human being.” He had watched his friends and comrades waste away, whither and blacken until they weren’t human anymore. “That program was poison. I was lucky.”

“Lucky, and good at your job.”

“That’s over now.”

“It’s not. The war never ends. The battlefield just changes.” Gabriel presses. “I read your files though. Your success rate is unbelievable-”

“Gabe-”

“And that work in Iraq, seven weeks alone in enemy territory? Think that was 52 confirmed-”

Jack stands abruptly. “It’s time for you to go.”

Gabriel doesn’t even move. If anything, he seems to relax back into the couch as he regards Jack. “Wouldn’t have guessed it, myself. You come off like a bland little hick. Even with all of this,” He gestures to his own face and Jack bristles. “But you’re beyond a war hero.” Gabriel clucks, tongue against his teeth. “Pity they didn’t even give you a medal. Just a blank discharge.”

“I served my country.” He did as he’d been told. “I did my duty.” He’d killed every target in sight, on command, as asked. “That’s behind me.”

“Is it?” Gabriel asks him. “Is that why you drink yourself away every night? And end up in bar fights each weekend?”

Jack grits his jaw hard enough to make his teeth creak. “Get out.”

“No.” Now Gabriel stands, takes two large strides and closes the distance between them. They’re nearly the same height- a feat considering how the program had bulked Jack up, added inches to his frame, weight to his physique. Gabriel was nearly a match. “I want your help.”

Jack can’t help his sneer. “Hell no.”

“Why not? Tell me you don’t miss it. I can see it in you- it would take a fool not to.” He licks his teeth, and they are very close. Chest to chest. Jack can smell gun oil on him. “People like us- the work never finishes. Don’t you want to take them down? Make sure they never do to anyone else what they did to you?”

The carrot on the stick presents itself, Jack thinks furiously. He glares at Gabriel who has the same, unchanging expression- a shit eating grin and an air of confidence as he offers. “Help me make a difference.”

“Difference?” Jack seethes. “I thought I made a difference, but it wasn’t. It was just bloodshed. Blood for money, money for blood, day in and day out. What you’re doing is no different.”

Gabriel’s face sours. It twists his features into something derisive, his dark eyes hard like obsidian and just as sharp. 

“You didn’t give me away. You obviously knew exactly what she was talking about, but you said no to collaborating with the police. Even though it wouldn’t take any skin off your back.” Gabriel is sure, certain, even in the face of Jack’s burgeoning anger. “You believe in my cause. You wouldn’t have defended me otherwise.”

Is that what Jack had done? Defended Gabriel? He guesses that was what it came down to, wasn’t it? 

Jack looks away. 

Gabriel’s head tilts. “I could give you a purpose.” Another one of those sly smiles crosses Gabriel’s features, like he knew the secrets of the world, and the answers were all safely tucked in his belt. “And a better paycheck.”

“Dirty money? You can keep that.”

“No, money that doesn’t belong to these bigtime hotshots. These companies, the government, the program that made you- they have so much money they don’t even know what to do with it. Money that belongs back with the people, and the public, and they use it on experimental programs that murder children or turn them into killing machines. Don’t you want to change that?”

Jack is about to protest that, but a hand skims his waist and he glances downwards. Gabriel’s gloves have come off, his fingers are twining into the worn linen of Jack’s t-shirt.

“Help me shut it down. You saw first hand what it does- I could use your skills. Your talents.” He says imploringly, tugging Jack closer by the hem of his shirt, drawing him in. But Jack wants to laugh in the face of that. The program had permanently altered the course of his life, had altered Jack himself irreparably. Everything that came after had been nightmare born. What did that make Jack- some kind of monster? 

“You don’t want my help.”

Gabriel’s mouth is close enough to his that Jack can feel the brush of words over his lips. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.”

Jack laughs a little skittishly. “Didn’t realize you wanted in my pants, boss. You could have just asked.” Another lie they both could see right through.

Those fingers hook into Jack’s belt loops, pull him the last few inches closer until their thighs touch. “This is me, asking.”

Gabriel tastes like cheap cigarettes, cheaper beer and lingering metal like blood. Jack can’t help trying to chase the taste when it’s right there, Gabe’s kevlar hard against his stomach and chest, Gabe’s fingers pushing up the edge of his shirt and curling around his hip bones. Before Gabe started showing up at his apartment whenever he wanted, it had been years since Jack had let himself get this close to someone. And somehow, the one person who had managed to shove his way past all of Jack’s carefully crafted walls and defenses with the bluntness of a sledgehammer, happened to be his employer. Possibly the most dangerous man in the city, a hidden mercenary and vigilante, who was now offering an absolutely terrible deal to Jack that Jack wanted no part of and seemed to have no choice in. The thought doesn’t even make Jack hesitate, pressing in closer, pushing at Gabe’s jacket until it drops to the floor heavily. 

When they break, Jack finds that he isn’t the only one who’s started to breathe a little faster. “Is this your way of convincing me?”

Gabe shoves him. Hard. Jack stumbles, and the backs of his knees catch the arm of the couch at an angle and send him toppling backward with a ‘whumpf’ into the cushions. And then Gabe is settling over him, knees against his hips, shrugging out of his shoulder holster and setting it on the ground beside them. “It can be,” He says as he pushes Jack's shirt up his chest. “But I don’t think it has to be. I think you’ve already decided.”

Jack shivers with Gabe’s hand skittering up his abdomen, over dips and along the ridges of scars. “I didn’t agree, you asshole-”

“You won’t say no.” There it is, that absolute certainty that makes Jack want to chuck Gabriel off of himself, onto the floor and away from him. He hisses when Gabe’s thumb and forefinger tweak a nipple. “Besides, I think you’ll be interested in our latest target.”

Gabe presses Jack down into the couch with a lascivious smile, and whispers right into his mouth, dripping the greedy little secret just between them. “It’s Volskaya Industries.”

Jack rears backwards, can’t move very far since he’s already laid back out on the couch. “Volskaya? Gabe, you can’t-”

“I can.” Gabe interrupts, and his hands travel back down, start tugging at Jack’s waistband. “And you’re going to help.”

“Gabe, wait, stop for just a second-”

“What, Jack?” Gabe says, and for the first time that evening, sounds exasperated. But his hands stop moving halfway down Jack’s zipper. “This has been in the works for months. You’re the last puzzle piece.”

Jack grabs Gabriel’s wrists, pulls them away from himself so he can think. “This is crazy. I’m retired.”

Gabriel scoffs. “Retired, but you still carry a firearm to the door with you?”

Jack’s lips thin. “I don’t do shit like that anymore, Gabe. I just… I just don’t.”

Gabriel sits back heavily on Jack’s thighs. His arms fold over his chest. “I’m not going to force you.” He says finally. 

But Jack can read between the lines. “But you’ll still go?”

A terse nod. Jack sighs, and closes his eyes. “That’s a suicide mission.”

“Not if you come with.”

“I’m not- you-” Jack groans, frustrated, and presses the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. “You’re a goddamn shit negotiator.”

“That’s not exactly what I’ve been told before, but call it what you like.” Gabe pulls Jack’s hands from his face, pushes them to the couch beside Jack’s ears, and his hips do a long languorous roll that highlights just how hard both of them are. “Like I said. I’m not forcing you.”

He kisses Jack again, pushes all of his weight down until there’s nothing else to focus on but Gabriel. And Jack gives in, lets himself give in and grasps Gabriel’s face between both hands to tilt the kiss into something deeper, more intimate. This crazy fucker- how the fuck did they both end up like this, and why was Gabriel so hellbent on dragging him deeper?

But that wasn’t even it. Gabriel didn’t need to drag him deeper, because Jack had never really left the muck at all. He lived with it, day in and day out, the repercussions of choices made blindly, written out in the way people regarded him, the dreams that followed him, the reactions and defenses that were so ingrained in his soul that they had become involuntary. They were carved into Jack’s face to stare back at him blankly everytime he glanced in a mirror. 

Gabriel’s belts clink as they come undone, thud loudly onto the floor next to the gun that’s fished out from the small of Jack’s back. Eventually a pair of trench knives that had been hidden somewhere on Gabriel’s person joins the growing pile, and when Jack’s hands travel down Gabriel’s arms, he finds a hidden arm sheath with another, smaller set of knives to adorn it. Gabe really was armed to the teeth. It makes Jack wonder just how much shit he’d gotten himself into tonight. 

Gabe’s boots are on his couch, but that doesn’t really matter, not with Gabriel grinding up against him, laving kisses down the side of his neck and into his collar. Finally, Jack’s cock comes free through the opening in his jeans, and Gabe wraps around him like a vice. He gives a squeeze.

“You’ll come, then?”

Jack groans. “If you shut the fuck up and start working I will.”

That makes Gabe laugh, the sound resonating from deep in his chest and through to Jack where Gabe presses kisses along a pectoral, outlining the jagged scar that slid crosswise down Jack’s chest. It’s when Gabriel gives a harsher more insistent roll of his hips and the canvas and buttons of his pants rub cruelly against the soft skin of Jack’s cock, that his hands fly to Gabe’s hips, to pull him closer or push him away, Jack isn’t sure, but it turns Gabriel’s rocking into something with a rhythm, a heartbeat that matches the one thundering in Jack’s chest. 

“Fuck these pants,” Jack huffs, and his fingers start pulling at snaps and buttons until Gabriel is free, until he can grab the both of them together and press their lengths together. Gabriel sighs, warm and deep and relieved. His hand slides from the base of Jack’s cock up to wrap around Jack’s fist until they’re both clutching at each other, a shared warmth in the cups of their palms, moving in tandem, breathing into each other’s mouths. Jack’s thighs tense bracingly, shifting himself up to give his hips more room, and Gabriel’s weight on him is a steady assurance, grounding. The only sound in the house is panting and the rustling movement of clothing. A siren peels out it’s alarm somewhere a few blocks over.

“You’ll come with me?” Gabriel gasps, hand working them both faster, forcing Jack to speed, and he can feel the hot coil of arousal inside him swell, drip through his limbs with Gabriel’s words. “Come with me. We would be so great together Jack, we could change this world. Make it something better.”

Jack isn’t sure that’s possible- he isn’t even sure Gabriel is still talking about his adventure to topple Volskaya industries anymore, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing else matters when Gabriel is involved, because Gabriel always seemed to know exactly how to get his way. 

Jack hisses through his teeth when Gabriel twists his hand over the tops of their lengths, presses them near painfully together. God, he was fucking close. “Yes,” Is what's torn from his throat, before he can second guess himself. Before he can say no the way any other rational, smart human being would. “Yes, fuck, Gabriel, I-”

And he comes, white hot and hard enough that for a minute his vision blacks out into stars and spots. And still Gabriel is moving, pulling him through the orgasm into something fiery hot with overstimulation, wracking Jack’s body in tremors and pants until Gabriel is curling over Jack, gasping hard, coming undone as well and splashing milky and white across what is already messily scrawled over Jack’s abdomen. Their mess pools into the dips of Jack’s stomach and belly button. 

Gabe’s forehead is pressed into his shoulder. Like this, it gives Jack a good moment to stare up at the blank ceiling, disbelieving. He licks his lips, and his throat feels raw. Fuck. 

“You make the sweetest sounds,” Gabriel murmurs into Jack’s chest, presses a kiss to his collarbone through Jack’s sweaty shirt.

Jack shakes his head, laughs a little and it sounds desperate in the warmed air of his shitty apartment. “You’re a fucking asshole.”

“Mm,” Gabriel agrees, drags himself up and off of Jack. He taps Jack’s chest lightly with the flat of his hand, and it smears more cum into Jack’s skin. Jack grimaces at him in disgust. “But you still came.”

Sometimes, it made a helluva lot of sense why this was the only person in the whole goddamn city who had bothered to give Jack a job at all. 

Jack’s thighs are cold when Gabriel lifts himself off. Already he’s gathering his discarded garments, strapping them on with easy efficiency. Jack still hasn’t moved, listens as Gabriel redresses. He had just agreed- did this make him a vigilante too? Jesus, how far he’d fallen in his life. 

He peeks an eye open to see Gabriel, regal even after just orgasming on a cheap couch in the clutches of a discarded soldier like it was a normal occurrence. Jack watches him clip the bone white owl mask into place, and thinks dully that he’s fallen in more ways than one in the short time since meeting Gabriel Reyes. He lets his eyes slide shut once more.

A rustle, and years of honed instinct has Jack feeling the movement of air before Gabriel’s once again gloved fingers slide against his face, a talon striping a careful line down the curve of his jaw.

“Tomorrow. 8:00am. Sharp.” And then Gabriel is gone, like a puff of air. A dream that only served to come to Jack in the worst moments and always in the dark of night. There wasn’t even the sound of his front door opening and closing to make him believe that this was real. 

Shirt still rucked up, pants undone and covered in his own cum, Jack reaches through the darkness blindly for his cigarette pack. The ember glows, a single spark of light amidst all the shadows in his life, and Jack holds it in until his lungs burn, like he can trap the smoke inside of himself forever and just fade away. He breathes out bitterly. Fuck his life.

**Author's Note:**

> This was barely proofread and very obviously unbeta’d. If there’s something that sticks out or a blank spot that I forgot to fill, please let me know. I love to hear people’s comments. :)
> 
> This story was brought to you by the most unusual music mix of:  
> Run boy Run - Woodkid, What the Water Gave Me - Florence + the Machine & La Stravaganza - Antonio Vivaldi
> 
> Edit: went back and changed some things, because there were a few glaringly obvious missteps, as well as an obsession with the time 10:30 for some reason? The story itself hasn't been affected.


End file.
